Hold Back the River
by Georgy-Girl
Summary: Sometimes all it takes to finally break a person is the smallest thing. Sometimes all it takes to save a person is love.
1. Nightmares

_A/N- I was trying to update a World of Our Own but couldn't get a Jonnie video I saw on youtube out of my head._

* * *

Grace sat on her bed with her knees drawn to her chest as she tried not to listen to the crying in the other room. She'd never seen her mother cry before, not properly, and seeing the tears on the usually emotionless face had shocked her. She'd been woken by the crying about half an hour ago, but when she'd creeped into the bedroom to see if her mother was ill, Grace had found her still asleep but thrashing about in the bedsheets. In a panic, Grace had tried to wake her but it had done no good, and the girl had soon fled to the safety of her bedroom. Toying with her mother's phone beside her, Grace finally found the courage to dial a number.

Jacob groaned when his phone rang, a squinted look at the clock telling him it was 2am. When he grabbed his phone, the nurse woke properly in an instant as caller ID shone brightly in the darkened room. "Connie?"

"You need to come over." Grace spoke quickly, hoping the panic in her voice wasn't as obvious to Jacob as it was to her.

"Grace?" Jacob frowned.

"You want to be with my mother, so prove it. Come over and make her better." Grace forced the words out.

"Is she sick?" Jacob questioned as he fought with his bed sheets before finally getting them off, freeing him to climb from the bed and fumble with a pair of trousers as he tried to dress.

"I don't know, I'm not a doctor!" Grace snapped. "You need to come NOW."

Torn between telling her to stop being so rude to him and just agreeing to go, the latter finally won out. "I'll be there in ten minutes. Can you make sure the front door is unlocked?"

When he heard the silence on the other end of the line, Jacob pulled the phone away from his ear and tutted with frustration when he saw Grace had hung up.

…

"You SAID you'd be here in ten minutes, but that was twelve minutes ago."

At the front door twelve minutes later, Jacob was met by a girl with tightly folded arms and a frown on her face, at odds with the pink princess pyjamas she currently wore.

Determined not to apologise, Jacob merely replied. "Traffic. Where is your mother? When you say she's sick, what do you mean?"

"She's in the bedroom, I'm sure you know where that is." Grace replied curtly.

Jacob clenched his jaw for a moment before heading towards the bedroom. "Is she vomiting? In pain?" He questioned further.

"I think she's having some sort of seizure, maybe."

When Jacob glanced back at Grace then, she just looked like a small, scared little girl and it softened him a little. "You wait here, you've done really well calling me." When he was sure Grace had sat on the lounge, Jacob took the stairs two at a time and entered the bedroom, his footfalls slowing when he saw Connie on the bed. She was tangled in her bedsheets, hair damp with sweat and tears, probably both, a frown darkening her features, but like every time he saw her after an absence, she looked almost too beautiful.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, for it was instantly obvious to him that she was having a nightmare rather than a seizure, Jacob reached out and began stroking hair from her damp forehead. "Hey, it's ok now. You're okay."

Somewhere in the deep, dark nightmare, Jacob's voice managed to get through, and slowly the woman in the bed began to calm, and when Grace could no longer hear cries she entered the room hesitantly. "Is she okay, Jacob?"

"She was just having a nightmare, nothing serious." Jacob replied, his eyes not moving from Connie's face.

Grace watched the way he stroked her mother's hair gently and saw the way her mother's body began to relax, her grip on the bedsheets loosening and her legs slowing until finally they stopped moving altogether. "Why?"

"Why what?" Jacob questioned, turning to look at the girl who looked a lot younger than the one who had opened the front door minutes earlier.

"Why is she having a nightmare?"

"I don't know." Jacob offered truthfully. "She has had a tough few weeks at work, and maybe she's not been dealing with it very well."

"…It's my fault, isn't it? For telling her she couldn't see you. I made her have a nightmare."

Jacob turned fully then, facing the girl who still hesitated in the doorway. "No. It could be one of hundreds of things she's dreaming about, firecracker, but I'm 100% sure that it's nothing to do with you."

"But I didn't help, did I? Maybe if you'd been around, she might not be holding things in." Grace approached then, sitting gently on the edge of her mother's bed next to Jacob.

"There's no point worrying about what we've done, nothing can change what's happened. What we need to think about is what we can do to stop it happening again. So I say you and me team up one more time and tackle this instead of the filing. What do you say?"

"…Okay." Grace gave a small smile.


	2. Croissants

When Connie woke the next morning she felt even more tired than she had done the night before. It took her almost 20 minutes to climb from the warm bed and dress herself, though she would have done anything to stay in the safety of those cosy blankets.

After washing her face was cold water in a failed attempt to wake herself properly, Connie then trudged her way down the stairs, her hand trailing along the banister sleepily with only the thought of coffee on her mind. Her reluctant footsteps stopped in the doorway of the kitchen, her face a picture of surprise. Grace was there, but not alone. Beside her sat Jacob, and they were laughing about something in the newspaper which was spread between them.

Grace was the first to see her and gave a wide smile. "Morning, mum. Jacob brought us warm croissants for breakfast!"

Connie managed to give them both a polite smile before making her way towards the coffee machine. "How nice." She turned on the machine then, but her mind was focused on the table behind her, bewildered by this sudden change in her child, and long after the coffee had warmed the mug Connie stayed staring it the machine. It was a beep outside that finally roused her.

"That's Hannah, her mum is taking me to school. See you tonight!" Grace jumped from her seat and pulled her bag onto her shoulder before she gave her mother a one-armed hug. "Bye, Jacob."

"Bye, Grace." Jacob called after her.

It was seconds after the door shut that Connie finally muttered, "Have a good day."

Jacob watched the doctor for a minute or two before he stood up and edged her out of the way to pour milk and sugar into her coffee. Once he'd placed the mug into her hands, he raised his eyebrows. "Bad night?"

"Something like that." Connie replied, blowing the steaming liquid in the hope it would cool enough for her not to burn her mouth when she took the first sip. "How did you manage to get in?"

"Grace." Jacob replied as he returned to his seat and ripped a section away from his croissant.

First sip of coffee done, Connie had the energy to sigh at this response. "I mean, how did you convince Grace to let you in?"

"Same way I've convinced you to let me in. My charm and a handsome smile." Jacob offered with a smile.

"Mm." Was the only response he received. When he stood up, however, her hand rested on his arm suddenly to stop him leaving, though he'd made no move to. "If you can wait twenty minutes, I can give you a lift to work." It felt as though finding Jacob in her house had made her feel safe again, like she'd felt that morning wrapped up in bed.

"Sure." Jacob nodded, his smile softening a little as Connie turned and left the room still looking lost.

* * *

"You forgot this." When Jacob climbed into the car, he placed a paper bag with a still warm croissant inside.

Though Connie wasn't hungry and couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten, she still offered her thanks and a distracted smile as she started the car. It stayed quiet then, aside from a soft murmur of a radio DJ coming from the speakers, but when Connie parked the car in her usual spot, a warm hand suddenly rested on her leg.

"Want to talk about it?" Jacob asked gently.

Connie glanced sideways at him, her mouth opening slightly, wanting to hear him tell her it would be okay, but she couldn't. Grace might be okay with him this morning, but her mind was easily changed, and Connie couldn't risk letting him in again. Instead, she shut her mouth and shook her head, settling on imagining the comforting words he might offer instead.

"Okay, well, you come find me if you need me." Jacob responded as he undid his seatbelt. "And have something to eat." He urged before climbing from the car.

With him gone, the car suddenly seemed too big, too dangerous alone, and so Connie also climbed from the car, her heels clicking quickly on the tarmac as she rushed to walk with Jacob. When she reached him, all he offered with a smile, no words, and for that she was grateful.

* * *

Rushed off her feet at work, Connie didn't read the message from Grace's childminder until she was already in the building with Grace, claiming to be too ill to work. With no energy to argue with her, Connie just accepted Grace into her arms and glared after the woman before turning them both towards her office. "Have you got any homework to do?"

"A bit." Grace supplied, keeping one arm around her mother's waist. "I got an A on my English test."

"Well done, Darling!" Connie managed her first real smile of the day as she dropped a kiss to her daughter's head. "Do you mind doing your work in my office while I finish up here?"

Grace shook her head and entered her mother's office, frowning when she saw the uneaten croissant still sat on the desk. "Mum."

Connie turned back to her daughter with a smile.

"…If you finish early enough, do you think we could go to that new restaurant in town for dinner? Hannah went last night, and she said it was really good."

"Of course, sweetheart. I'll try and finish as soon as I can." Connie replied, turning away again.

"Mum!"

"Grace?" Connie turned back to her daughter once more.

"…Can I invite Jacob to say thank you for this morning?" Grace questioned. Before her mother could answer, Jacob sauntered past them, arms full of boxes bound for the store room.

"Where am I getting invited?"

When Grace gave no reply, Connie glanced at him. "…That new restaurant in town. Grace wants to go tonight."

"Well count me in, I've heard good things. As long as you're paying of course, fire cracker." Jacob offered, earning a smile from the young girl and a puzzled look from her mother as he walked away.

Giving her mother a smile, Grace turned and entered the office fully, dropping her school bag on the ground before sitting in her mother's office chair.


End file.
